New Leadership for the Social Sector
Building scalable and financially sustainable enterprises that make critical goods and services affordable for the poor requires more than financial capital. An equally important, and vital need is talented individuals bringing intelligence, passion, and energy to each endeavor.
What Being a Fellow Means
The world needs to build an entrepreneurial bench of top talent with strong financial and operational skills, experience in low-income markets, and the moral imagination to build enterprises that meet the needs of low-income consumers.
Each year, the Acumen Fund Fellows Program provides extraordinary young professionals with a unique opportunity to use their skills to effect real social change with our portfolio organizations in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, India and Pakistan, and to build lasting relationships with other like-minded individuals.
Acumen Fund’s one-year fellowship begins with eight weeks of intensive leadership training in our New York City office. Training topics include investment and valuation techniques, business models for the poor and risk analysis. The Fellows also meet with leaders from diverse fields (design, investment, venture capital as well as leading writers and thinkers) and explore issues related to our investment geographies and sectors.
Fellows will learn and apply these skills while enjoying an unusual level of responsibility both at Acumen Fund and within our portfolio organizations. Each Fellow is assigned to a specific investment to support senior management in tackling critical business issues – market expansion, business plan refinement, supply chain improvements, or even leading a new business initiative. At the end of these assignments, the Fellows return to New York City for a month to share experiences and lessons learned and to focus on job opportunities.
Become a Fellow
Ideal Fellows include those who have already decided on a career in venture philanthropy, those who are seeking a career at the highest levels in the corporate world but want to better understand and have an impact on problems of global poverty, and budding social entrepreneurs who want to learn about managing organizations in the most demanding settings.
The application process takes place each fall for the Fellows class of the following year. Applications for the 2008-9 class have closed. Applications for the 2010 class will open in early September 2008 and close in late October. Please check back for further updates on the process.